DANCE: 'EL PENITENTE,' BY GRAHAM

By JENNIFER DUNNING

Published: June 5, 1986

''EL PENITENTE'' is a bold, stark little trio whose departure point is the Penitentes of the Southwest and the public rites of purification through penance practiced by the sect. First performed in 1940, ''El Penitente'' seems to be one of Martha Graham's simplest dances, an almost bustling sequence of 10 brief scenes of piety and play, as they might have been enacted by traveling players of other times. But a performance of the trio by the Martha Graham Dance Company on Tuesday at City Center, when it re-entered the repertory after a nine-year absence in a revival dedicated to the Arizona State University Centennial, suggested that that simplicity is somewhat deceptive.

The dance has the flattened, two-dimensional look of painted images, its shapes and colors reminiscent of work by Georgia O'Keeffe and its repetitions and abrupt rhythms influenced, perhaps, by the patterning in American Indian folk art. The rituals depicted in ''El Penitente,'' among them flagellation and crucifixion, draw their resonance from the old Spanish Catholic Church. And the dance itself has often been interpreted as a simple but colorful abstraction of a folk pageant of sorrowing penitence. But George White Jr., Steve Rooks and Terese Capucilli caught the dance's playful innocence, and were believable as peasant performers and as religious symbols.

Mr. White's iconic Christ Figure served as a kind of magnet to the action, appearing and disappearing with just the faintest hint of quizzical detachment. Mr. Rooks was a very young Penitent, whose strong back and tilted head suggested not so much the sting of sinfulness as the hope of salvation. Torn between the Magdalen and his Maker, Mr. Rooks's Penitent was amusingly confused, then sure as he wisely reached for her and not the apple she bore as a symbol of temptation. Miss Capucilli's Virgin, Magdalen and Mother shared a very human sensuality, controlled at first and then expressed in switching hips, a willful turn of the head and juicy little traveling steps, hurried along by the rolling pulse of Louis Horst's invigorating score.

The props for ''El Penitente'' are among the most represenational designed for Miss Graham by Isamu Noguchi, her longtime collaborator. Miss Graham makes wonderful fun of her taste for portentous abstract props, costume and set elements in ''Part Real-Part Dream,'' a teasing look at sex, love and competition danced to music by Mordecai Seter. The dance was performed with a wit and exuberance that had the audience cheering. The cast was led by Judith Garay as the lucious straight-woman of the comic quartet, Thea Nerissa Barnes as the fiendish sexpot, Peter Sparling as Miss Garay's addled but touchingly amorous reject and Julian Littleford in an outstanding portrayal of Miss Barnes's male counterpart, arrogant, eager and utterly undone by her insatiable appetite.

Maxine Sherman radiated feverish sweetness and serene piety in a beautifully danced performance of Joan as Martyr in Miss Graham's ''Seraphic Dialogue,'' in a previously reviewed cast that also included Peggy Lyman, Miss Barnes, Jacqulyn Buglisi and Mr. Sparling. The program was completed by Miss Graham's luminous ''Diversion of Angels.'' Jonathan McPhee was the evening's conductor.